Tag: Parents Television Council

The Parents Television Counsel is calling on Netflix to remove the controversial Argentinian film Desire from the streaming service, saying the company is placing profits ahead of corporate responsibility in distributing what it considers child porn.
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Netflix CEO Reed Hastings defended the decision to renew the controversial teen drama series 13 Reasons Why for a third season, despite concerns from one parenting group that warned the streaming service could potentially have “the blood of child…

Everyone is loving “Roseanne” these days — including the Parents Television Council (PTC), which once lobbied for the Roseanne Barr sitcom to be canceled. But that was back in the day when the ABC series was apparently vulgar.

It’s all cool now, says PTC president Tim Winter.

“It’s clear that ‘Roseanne’ resonated with audiences, and good for ABC for creating entertainment for family audiences who live outside of New York or Los Angeles,” he exclusively told TheWrap. “Our review of the show found no strongly objectionable content in terms of sex, violence or profanity, and we we hope that continues.”

As Winter said in his statement, the council no longer finds “Roseanne” profane. But back in 1997, during the show’s ninth season, it singled out “Roseanne” as the culprit for the majority of all curse words on ABC, deeming the sitcom unfit for family viewing.

“More than two-thirds of ABC’s curse words were found on ‘Roseanne,’” the council said at the time. “During the February 18 episode, the title character says of her estranged husband, Dan, ‘That b—–d! I will certainly not calm down! He can just go [bleeped, but clearly the f-word] himself!’ She utters two more bleeped words with her back to the camera. The previous week, Roseanne comments, ‘I’m gonna be squeezing my a– into size 10 pants.’ Both episodes were rated PG.”

That’s not the only time the PTC has slammed Roseanne Barr for expletives. In 2012, they called her roast on Comedy Central the “worst cable TV show of the week” for “explicit profanity and unbelievably graphic sex talk.”

Many people believe Barr’s own political shift from liberal independent (remember when she lost the Green Party nomination and ran for President on the Peace and Freedom party ticket?) to Donald Trump voter is a key component to the massive Nielsen numbers ABC saw earlier this week.

(And some slightly more cynical folks might also pin the notoriously conservative PTC’s sudden support of “Roseanne” on the same switcheroo.)

Tuesday’s night’s premiere of “Roseanne” scored 18.2 million viewers, which not only bested the show’s 1997 series finale, but more than doubled what ABC expected. The episode ended up being Tuesday’s highest-rated entertainment telecast in six years (not counting sports or news), and the best demo number for any sitcom on any night since September 2014.

Trump even bestowed a phone call to Barr to congratulate her on the high ratings of the revival. Piers Morgan believes it should have actually been Roseanne calling Trump to thank him, as the former “Celebrity Apprentice” contestant attributed her sitcom’s huge ratings to what he called “the enduring power of Trump.”

“So Roseanne, a Trump supporter on & off screen, delivers stupendous ratings in the rebooted series,” Morgan wrote on Twitter. “A message there, methinks, for all the screaming Trump-hating liberals: not everyone in America thinks like you…”

America — particularly the PTC-aligned middle part with all those red states — gets its next chance to catch the Conner Family on Tuesday at 8/7c on ABC.

The White House has a YouTube hit on its official channel, but it’s sure to draw some flack from certain parental groups. The presidential home is showcasing a video that was used to illustrate violence in video games during a Thursday meeting between opposing camps on the issue.
The video, titled Violence in Video Games, is now exploding on the White House channel on the service, and is currently No.4 on the most-watched videos list on WH’s YouTube channel, with more…

You don’t wanna wait for the 20th anniversary of “Dawson’s Creek” to be over before you hear this news. Or, rather, remember this old news.

Saturday marks two decades since the pop culture phenomenon debuted, so TheWrap would like to bring this little bit of history to your attention: Back in the ’90s, the Parents Television Council named the popular WB series (which ran for five seasons from 1998-2003) one of the worst shows on television — two years running.

This was in part due to positive references the teen soap made about pornography and condoms, and the show’s acceptance of LGBTQ characters.

The organization awarded the Kevin Williamson-created show the prize of single worst program of the 1997-98 and 1998-99 seasons for being “the crudest of the network shows aimed at kids,” which had “an almost obsessive focus on pre-marital sexual activity.”

The series — which starred James Van Der Beek, Katie Holmes, Joshua Jackson, Michelle Williams and later Busy Philipps — was bumped down to the fourth worst show in 2000-2001.

It wasn’t just the PTC that had it in for Dawson and co. Former UPN President Lucie Salhany was also very critical of the WB for airing the drama, which portrayed “adolescent characters in adult situations,” in an early time slot, on what was supposed to be “the family network.”

But, it was a rival network. So, take that criticism with a grain of salt.

While that’s a substantial tally of complaints, the PTC sure asked for it — literally.

The group “called for concerned citizens to file complaints over the April 25th episode that aired at 8:30 pm Eastern/7:30 pm Central, and which centered on a teenage girl and her desire to get breast implants,” per a Tuesday media release from the PTC. “The minor tells her guardian that ‘… you’re working the room like you’re mayor of tit town.’ Not only was an indecent word used in a sexual context, but the dialogue was delivered by a minor.”

“Furthermore, the entire episode included graphic sexual dialogue and double-entendres, yet it was rated by Fox as appropriate for viewing by children as young as 14 years old,” it continued.

When reached by TheWrap, Fox had no comment on the PTC’s sky-high stack of gripes. The Parents Television Council itself had plenty more to say however.

Like this:

“We are urging the FCC to help protect the publicly-owned broadcast airwaves from indecent content such as what was aired on ‘The Mick,’” Henson said. “The t-word has historically been considered off-limits for broadcast TV, as was affirmed in the FCC versus Pacifica Foundation case. Even comedian George Carlin once joked that it was one of the words you could never say on television.”

“The FCC should issue an indecency fine to send a message to Fox Broadcasting and to the broadcast TV industry that indecent content is unacceptable,” she continued. “As long as Fox is licensing and profiting from the use of a public resource – the broadcast airwaves – they must abide by the law.

“Additionally, not only did Fox allow a minor to say the indecent word, Fox enabled the minor to be sexualized by centering the entire episode around her breasts,” Henson went on. “With the Senate hearings over the nominations of Jessica Rosenworcel and Brendan Carr to serve as FCC commissioners taking place on Wednesday, the FCC will finally be in a position to act quickly on adjudicating these complaints. Children must be protected from indecent content.”

“The Mick,” which follows a hard-living aunt (Olson) who is forced to take care of her wealthy sister’s spoiled kids after their parents flee the country to avoid criminal charges, was one of the 2016-17 season’s biggest freshman hits — especially in the sitcom genre.

Season 2 of “The Mick” premieres on Sept. 26 on Fox, whether the PTC likes it or not.

The Parents Television Council took a bit of a victory lap on Tuesday over the cancellations of ABC’s “The Real O’Neals” and Fox’s “Scream Queens.” Oh yeah, and the PTC also used the moment to ask Fox to reconsider its renewal of Kaitlin Olson comedy “The Mick.”

“Tuesday nights just got a bit safer for children and families watching television,” organization president Tim Winter said in a media release. “ABC and Fox have canceled primetime programs that were routinely filled with sex, violence, and profanity, yet were marketed by the networks as appropriate for children. We call on the networks to replace these explicit programs with high-quality, family-friendly fare.”

In an email to TheWrap, the PTC’s public relations rep said Winter’s group is “most glad” to see those two shows go away.

In March 2016, the PTC conducted an analysis of the first three episodes of “The Real O’Neals” and found what considered sexual dialogue or bleeped profanities once every 43 seconds on average. The series was rated TV-PG; it aired at 8:30 p.m. ET/7:30 p.m. Central.

“We hope that Fox will reconsider its decision to renew ‘The Mick,’ while also reconsidering its decision to cancel a positive program like ‘Pitch,’ which refreshingly offers a positive and inspiring female lead character,” the PTC concluded Tuesday’s note. “Surely the networks can program their schedules in order to entertain broad audiences without relying on ‘lowest common denominator’ content.”

2ND UPDATE with statements from PTC, MPAA and GLAAD 1:37 PM: The Parents Television Council, the Motion Picture Association of America and GLAAD have sent out statements in regards to the new PG-13 rating given by Classifications and Ratings Administration. Read all three at the bottom of this post.UPDATE, 11:49 AM: The MPAA and the Weinstein Company have agreed on a PG-13 rating for TWC’s transgender drama 3 Generations, citing for “mature thematic content [and] some…

The Parents Television Council is none-too-pleased with the profanity it finds on network TV, particularly the shows on which teenage and child characters use what it calls “overtly sexualized and adult language.”

TheWrap asked the watchdog group to rank the top offenders for us. Here they are in order: 1) ABC’s “The Real O’Neals,” 2) ABC’s “The Goldbergs,” and 3) Fox’s animated “Bob’s Burgers.”

“It’s bad enough that children are increasingly exposed to vulgar dialogue on television at all hours of the day. It’s even worse that they’re seeing the vulgarity coming directly from the lips of other children,” said PTC President Tim Winter. “This troubling new trend should concern every family, given the inarguable evidence that children are influenced by what they see on TV.”

“Adding fuel to the fire is the contemptuous content ratings system that allows TV networks to rate such explicit content TV-PG or TV-14, suggesting to parents that the programs are appropriate for their kids,” he added. “Yet children are being exposed to age-inappropriate levels of profanity and sexual dialogue especially on family-targeted sitcoms, such as ABC’s ‘The Real O’Neals,’ which contained more sexual dialogue involving teen and child characters than any other primetime program on broadcast TV,” he added.

The PTC found that Disney-owned ABC had the largest number of instances of profanity and sexualized language spoken by children, with 81 instances of profanity and 42 instances of sexual dialogue during the measured time period. In part, this is because ABC airs the most programs about families, Winter’s group said.

Fox has the second-most programs containing child and teen characters using profanity and sexual dialogue, thanks in large part to Sunday’s “Animation Domination” block, which includes “Bob’s Burgers.”

Elsewhere, primetime programming on CBS and NBC is largely targeted to adults, includes few family-themed programs, and thus contains relatively few child or teenage characters.